The odds are against Anna Kadilo. A 13-year-old living in a rural Tanzanian village, she struggles every day to get an education. As the oldest girl in her family, she is required to do burdensome chores that leave her exhausted. She walks 6 kilometers (about 3½ miles) to school each day, and at night she has little chance to study because her family home has no electricity.
Despite her determination and dreams of becoming a nurse, it is far more likely that Anna will be forced to drop out of school because of poverty, rape or failing grades. She will likely be pregnant or forced to marry within a year. She may even have HIV/AIDS. Then she will be 14, uneducated and defenseless against the forces that will overwhelm her chances at a better life.
Anna is not alone. Sixty-two million girls worldwide are denied the right to attend primary and lower secondary school. In Sub-Saharan Africa, 75 percent of girls start school but only 8 percent finish. And, data show that girls in poor countries who live in rural communities are the most disadvantaged: In Tanzania, a dismal 4 percent of girls from rural areas will finish secondary school.
Fortunately, a great deal of attention is being focused on girls’ education, and the future looks brighter for children saddled with the triple disadvantage of being female, poor and from a rural area. Malala Yousafzai’s movie, “He Named Me Malala,” opened recently to audiences across the country, inspiring millions with her message: “Every girl, no matter where she lives, no matter what her circumstances, has a right to learn.”
In September, the United Nations identified gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls as a priority Sustainable Development Goal for the next 15 years. And economist Gene Sperling released a book that cites girls’ education as the “world’s best investment with the widest-ranging returns.”
In their book, “What Works In Girls’ Education,” Sperling and Rebecca Winthrop of the Brookings Institution Center for Universal Education present overwhelming evidence for why girls’ education is the highest-returning investment in the world. It raises incomes and grows economies while reducing birth rates and infant mortality, maternal mortality, child marriage and the incidence of HIV/AIDS and malaria. Given the powerful data, the world cannot afford to deny education to girls.
Education for all — but girls in particular — has a significant positive effect on economic output, up to a 12 percent increase in economic growth for each additional year of schooling. Girls’ education also improves agricultural output. A study in Tanzania, Kenya and Uganda found that education for illiterate female farmers increased the value of crops and livestock, yielding a 61 percent increase in income (as well as the welcome secondary effect of increased food production for a hungry and growing population). Education also leads to more jobs and better wages for women. Each year of schooling is estimated to yield a 10 percent increase in wages. Yale economist Paul Schultz found that wage returns from secondary education were even higher, in the range of 15 to 25 percent.
Women with more education have fewer children and have them later in life. And, a UNESCO-commissioned study shows that universal primary education for girls would reduce child mortality by 15 percent, and that universal secondary education would reduce child mortality by 49 percent. Further, better-educated women are less likely to die due to complications during childbirth. Data show that if every woman in the world had a primary education, maternal deaths could fall 66 percent.
Girls’ education is often referred to as the social vaccine against HIV/AIDS because of the significant reduction in incidence of the disease among better-educated girls and women. In fact, girls who receive a secondary education are half as likely to contract HIV/AIDS as uneducated girls. This is also true for malaria, because educated girls understand how the disease is contracted and are more likely to use preventative measures such as bed nets.
According to the United Nations Foundation, when girls and women earn income, they reinvest 90 percent of it in their families. It is clear that higher economic outcomes for women, combined with smaller and healthier families, will yield multigenerational effects and create lasting change.
With these powerful, multifaceted returns in mind, the Africa School Assistance Project and Shining Hope for Communities (both with roots in Denver) have developed holistic programs to increase access to education for girls in East Africa. The idea is simple: bring together into one program myriad supports for girls so they can access school and stay in school. Our programs are not only building schools but also providing services such as safe housing, support to improve academic quality, health care, clean water, leadership training and community education and engagement.
So, what about Anna? She has a chance to live a longer, healthier and more prosperous life because she is lucky enough to be in a community where the Africa School Assistance Project and Shining Hope for Communities have joined with local leaders to provide access to free high-quality education, good nutrition, clean drinking water and effective family planning.
Anna is lucky, but educating girls should not be left to chance.
Simply put, girls’ education is the world’s best investment and we are failing future generations if we all don’t demand a deep, sweeping and immediate commitment to it.
Susan Bachar of Denver is executive director of the Africa School Assistance Project. Kennedy Odede and Jessica Posner are co-founders of Shining Hope for Communities and co-authors of “Find Me Unafraid: Love, Loss and Hope in an African Slum” (Ecco, October 2015).
To send a letter to the editor about this article, submit online or check out our guidelines for how to submit by e-mail or mail.
